For as long as we can remember, corporate ambition in India has been measured by skylines. The taller the headquarters, the more expensive the real estate, the closer to Bengaluru’s Outer Ring Road or Gurugram’s Cyber City, the greater the prestige. Companies built their identities around being in the “right” zip code, not necessarily around building in the right way. But the glass towers tell only half the story. Behind the glitz of India’s metros lies a tale of congestion, rising rents, water shortages, collapsing infrastructure, and endless churn. The promise of opportunity is real, but it comes at a steep social cost. It uproots young people from their families, sucks talent out of smaller towns, and creates an ever-widening gap between metro prosperity and rural stagnation. Zoho thought differently.
Against this backdrop, Zoho, the homegrown software giant, has built something quietly radical: a business model that thrives precisely because it does not worship the metro. Instead, it bets on tier-2 cities, small towns, and even villages as the backbone of its operations.
This isn’t a marketing gimmick. It’s a deliberate, long-term philosophy that challenges the default assumptions of corporate India. And it might just be the most sustainable and equitable growth story the country has seen.
Tenkasi: The Village that Built a Global Product
The town of Tenkasi, tucked away in Tamil Nadu near the Western Ghats, is not where you’d expect a global SaaS product to be built. There are no gleaming campuses, no sprawling tech parks, no airport buzzing with venture capitalists. Yet it was here that Zoho Desk, one of the company’s flagship products, was created.
The significance of that fact cannot be overstated. For decades, young people from towns like Tenkasi had one option if they wanted to pursue a career in technology: leave. Leave for Chennai, for Bengaluru, or for Hyderabad. Leaving wasn’t a choice; it was a necessity. Zoho turned that necessity into an option. By anchoring serious product development in Tenkasi, it showed that world-class work can be done outside the urban echo chambers.
In doing so, Zoho didn’t just create jobs. It created dignity. A young engineer from Tenkasi doesn’t have to tell his family he’s “going away” to make something of himself. He can stay, work, and still contribute to a product used by businesses across the globe.
Talent Without Degrees
If Zoho’s choice of geography is revolutionary, its approach to talent is equally disruptive. In 2004, it launched what was then called Zoho University, now known as Zoho Schools of Learning. The idea was simple, but transformative: not every capable student has the money or inclination to pursue a formal degree. Why should that be a barrier to working in software?
Zoho began recruiting students as young as 17 or 18, right after high school. They were given a stipend, trained rigorously for 18 to 24 months, and then absorbed into the company’s teams. These weren’t token placements. Many of Zoho’s product managers, engineers, and team leads today are graduates of this program.
This approach democratizes opportunity. It doesn’t matter whether you could afford IIT coaching or whether you scored high in an entrance exam. What matters is your curiosity, your grit, and your ability to learn. By paying stipends during training, Zoho also removes the economic penalty of learning. For many families, this is the difference between a child dropping out to earn daily wages and a child building a career in technology.
In a country where higher education is both prohibitively expensive and often disconnected from industry needs, Zoho’s model is a sharp corrective. It says: judge people by what they can do, not by the labels stamped on their résumés.
The Rural Revival Mindset
Zoho calls its approach a “rural revival.” The phrase is not an empty slogan. It captures a philosophy: opportunity should travel to people, not the other way around.
Sridhar Vembu, Zoho’s co-founder and CEO, has put it bluntly: “If all the talent is forced to move to the cities, then villages will never develop. The only way to fix this is to move some jobs to villages.”
In practice, this means establishing offices not just in Chennai or Austin, but also in places like Renigunta in Andhra Pradesh, or Nagpur in Maharashtra. It means encouraging employees to work closer to their hometowns. It means treating distributed offices not as “back offices” but as integral hubs of innovation.
The impact is profound. When high-quality jobs land in a small town, the local economy transforms. A cluster of well-paid employees creates demand for better broadband, new restaurants, improved housing, and even cultural life. Local colleges begin aligning curricula to industry needs. Families who once dreaded their children leaving for distant cities can breathe easier.
Most importantly, it reduces the brain drain that hollows out small-town India. Young people can pursue careers without abandoning their roots. That sense of belonging pays dividends in loyalty, stability, and long-term retention, qualities every corporate HR department craves but struggles to manufacture.
Why This Matters for India’s Development
Zoho’s model matters not just for Zoho, but for India. The reason is simple: India’s growth story cannot be carried by its metros alone.
- Balanced Development. If the bulk of opportunities remain concentrated in a few cities, India will continue to see lopsided development. Metros will strain under the weight of endless migration, while smaller towns stagnate. A distributed model spreads prosperity more evenly.
- Sustainability. Metro growth comes with environmental costs: traffic jams, water shortages, and rising carbon footprints. Smaller towns, if developed wisely, can absorb growth more sustainably, without the same ecological toll.
- Social Cohesion. Migration disrupts families, erodes community ties, and creates alienation. Allowing people to work where they live strengthens social fabric.
- Resilience. A company with operations spread across multiple towns is less vulnerable to shocks. Political disruptions, natural disasters, or real estate bubbles in one location don’t cripple the entire enterprise.
Lessons for Indian Corporates
What can other Indian companies learn from Zoho’s playbook? Several things stand out.
- Shift Real Decision-Making Outside Metros. It’s not enough to open satellite offices in small towns. Give those offices serious responsibilities- product development, client servicing, R&D. Without this, they remain glorified back offices.
- Build Local Talent Pipelines. Partner with local institutions to create industry-aligned training programs. Better still, fund your own training schools, as Zoho did. Pay stipends. Make the pipeline sustainable.
- See Community as Infrastructure. Broadband, daycare, transport, local sourcing, these aren’t perks. They are the infrastructure that makes a workforce productive. Invest in them.
- Redefine Hiring Criteria. Move beyond degrees and pedigrees. Look for skills, aptitude, and the willingness to learn. In the long run, this builds a more loyal and diverse workforce.
- Measure Local Impact. Companies should track not only profits but also the share of their spending that circulates within local economies. Publish these figures. Treat them as seriously as ESG metrics.
A Counterpoint to the Unicorn Culture
In recent years, India’s startup ecosystem has often celebrated blitzscaling, raise big, spend bigger, and chase hypergrowth at any cost. Zoho has taken the opposite path: bootstrapped, profitable, and deliberate. Its choice to embed itself in smaller towns fits this ethos. It resists hype and instead bets on compounding: train local talent, anchor in local economies, and reap benefits over decades.
As Vembu himself once said: “We don’t chase valuation; we chase value.” That ethos permeates the company’s choice to expand outside metros as well. It isn’t about quick wins, it’s about durable growth.
This doesn’t mean the model is easy to copy. It requires patience, a willingness to invest without immediate returns, and the courage to resist the metro glamour. But if more companies adopted even parts of it, the collective impact on India’s development would be enormous.
The Bigger Picture
India stands at a demographic crossroads. Millions of young people will enter the workforce over the next decade. If opportunities remain concentrated in four or five cities, we risk deepening inequality, overburdening urban infrastructure, and wasting rural potential. If, however, companies follow Zoho’s lead and distribute opportunity, we could unlock a more balanced, equitable, and sustainable growth story.
The choice is stark. Do we want an India where ambition means leaving home behind, or an India where ambition can flourish anywhere?
Zoho has shown us that the latter is possible. It has proven that a global company can grow from rural soil, that software used in New York can be written in Tenkasi, and that prosperity can be rooted in place rather than uprooting people from it.
A Map for the Future
Zoho’s story is not just about one company’s success. It is a blueprint for how Indian corporates can reimagine their role in society. By decentralizing growth, investing in local talent, and building resilient communities, they can not only strengthen their own businesses but also help shape a more inclusive national economy.
India’s metros will always matter. But the future of Indian growth will be decided in the places we’ve long ignored: the tier-2 city, the small town, the village. Zoho has already lit the path. The question is whether the rest of corporate India has the courage to walk it.
